Mann Family Bonding!

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

As you all know, the threat of a zombie apocalypse is becoming ever more imminent. Now more than ever it is important to ready yourself and your loved ones for the possibility of flesh eating monsters taking over the world!!!
In the spirit of preparedness the Mann Family decided to take advantage of a recently discarded human silhouette used as a prop in educating the university about domestic violence and turn it into a man killing, innard devouring ghoul to aid in our doomsday prepping.
Here's how we did it :

We started out with our purple person cut out, some chalk and paint.

We used the chalk to give our zombie that pale grey dead look and painted on some tattered up clothes.

Then we added some cool oozing wounds.

Next was making the face look scary and gruesome. We added an eyeball falling out of its socket and a gaping mouth dripping with blood.

After that we just put some finishing touches like buttons and a belt as well as an awesome bite mark. We also added a wig and cowboy hat to give our zombie some personality.

Now we're all ready to use our guy for some target practice!

Here's the set up for our target practice. We had two pizza boxes with target stickers, two plastic targets that spun and swayed when hit, and, of course, the star of the show, Mr. Zombie.We started out on the pizza boxes with target stickers to get our sights properly aligned then moved on to the two other targets and finally our zombie.We were shooting 22 caliber long rifles for awhile, then practiced shooting with a 22 caliber handgun and a 9 mm handgun.

Here's our Mr. Zombie after a couple of rounds:

Right between the eyes!!!!!

Emily shooting the 9 mm. She said it made her hand hurt.

Here's Mr. Zombie after a few more rounds with the 22's and the 9 mil.

A pretty successful practice day I would say. Zombies don't stand a chance against the Mann Family :):).

******* Some interesting critters we saw while out in the woods...Special thanks to Gramma for lunch, bug spray, and rescue services after we locked ourselves out of the car :)

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Today is Father's Day and in addition to the usual breakfast in bed Lydia and Emily decided to get everything needed to build a vertical garden with their dad. Now why vertical gardening you may ask. Well Bob is a huge gardener and outdoors kind of man as well as being a conservationist. When Emily spotted a book on vertical farming we decided it would be the perfect fathers day gift.
So here is our adventure with vertical gardening!

We got ours from Lowes. We just went to the garden center and asked if they had any pallets we could have and they told us that they throw the pallets out behind the store and if there were any there we could have them. You should definitely ask before you take any however you can probably get pallets from any type of garden center or home improvement place.Try to get one with all the boards still attached and in good condition. If you can't find one like that just get a few nails and a hammer and no harm done!

After we got our pallet we needed to pull all the old staples out of it to get it garden ready. This was relatively easy to do and took about 10 minutes total with a pair of pliers.

After you have secured your pallet its time to wrap it!
We got recycled landscaping fabric that was green and cost less than $10. You really only use a little bit so if you can get scrap from a landscape company then that would work too.

Wrap the landscape fabric around the pallet the exact same way you would a present. Then simply use a staple gun to secure the fabric to the pallet.

Here's Emily standing on the fabric while dad staples.

Next step is to cut slits in the fabric where the plants will come out of. If your pallet has one side with lots of slats and one side with only a two or three then use the side with lots of slats. Cut slits in between the slats as well at the top of the pallet because you can have plants coming out of the top as well.

After that its time to pack the pallet with potting soil. For a regular sized pallet you will probably need 2 bags but for our mini pallet that we used we only needed about 3/4 of a big bag.

We put the soil in the frame layer by layer. First we filled up the pallet to the first split we had made in the fabric then inserted the plants and loaded soil on top of them till the next split. We did this for each layer till we got to the top and then had plants coming out the top of pallet as well.

This is about halfway done. We used a variety of plants, spillers, thrillers, and fillers, for the garden but ended up putting the annuals at the top since that area will be easier to replant. We also used a lot of herbs to make a sort of vertical herb garden.

The finished product!!!!!

Its a good idea to let it lay flat for a few weeks to let the roots grow in and hold the soil together better. We'll update in a few weeks to let you know how it turned out!

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About Me

We are a loving, crazy retired military family. We live in Auburn, AL with our three dogs, Maxwell, Daphne, and Lucy, our two kitties, Sugar and Elwood, our fish, Cho, and our pot bellied pig, Winston. Lydia, the oldest daughter is a math major at Auburn University and Emily, the youngest daughter is a Freshman at AJHS. Aldona, the matriarch is currently getting her second undergrad degree in Rehabilitation and Disability Studies at Auburn University and Bob is an Emergency Planner with Public Safety at Auburn University. We started this blog to share with the world our adventures and love for each other. Enjoy!